


Petrichor

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [87]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Light Dom/sub, Mild Painplay, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:35:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7587154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Space Valentine's Day, or, 101 Demons to Raise</p>
            </blockquote>





	Petrichor

**Author's Note:**

> for anon, who prompted: It's Valentine's Day and Twelve has the notion that partners during this time of year (or any time of year really) require constant... ahem sexual ahem attention.

Fingers crossed, the Doctor won’t bother about the holiday. Generally he doesn’t, is just a little surprised they’re occurring, but he’s been a little try-hard these days. Like he’s crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s, and can’t spell for shit.

It’s Valentine’s Day but it’s also a work day, and while it might be nice for her alien boyfriend to pay her some attention, she also just. Doesn’t really care. She’s tired. Over it, honestly, and besides, she never expects roses from him.

The TARDIS whines into place in her flat as she shuts the front door. No Doctor emerging. She comes to him, then. It’s like that today. She has visions of a painful amount of the wrong sort of flowers, mounds of cheap sweets, mariachi bands, whatever overcompensating idiots do to participate in an arbitrary Day of Romantic Affection.

She takes a deep breath, straightens her shoulders, and swings the door open. Expecting the worst, wary and tense and a cheap quip on her lips. Except everything’s normal. As can be, anyway. Possibly the TARDIS is a little quieter than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The Doctor is leaning against the console, shadowed dark by the bright lights. The silhouette of him.

“Heyo,” she says, closing the door behind her.

“What path do you choose?” he asks, in a mildly ominous tone.

She drops her purse on the stairs and toes her heels off, grabs the slippers she’d left by the door. “Sorry, what?”

“Left hand or right hand?” He gestures, palms up: left hand, right hand.

“Left…hand?” she guesses, shrugging. Maybe he’s trying to do magic tricks again.

He smiles tightly, a small, forced sort of thing that she hasn’t seen on him much lately. He’s come a long way since they first met. Odd to see it on him now, how it clashes against the person he’s grown into. The hair, for starters, doesn’t work with that smile at all. Let alone the plaid trousers.

“I’m not surprised,” he says, letting his arms fall to his sides.

She shuffles over, reaching behind her back and under her t-shirt to unhook her bra, wriggling around until she can pull it off through her sleeve. The laundry chute meeps happily as she tosses it in. “So is there a pound coin behind my ear?”

He’d been looking at her expectantly - confused, now, head tilting like a dog’s, like maybe he could hear the social cues if his ears were pointing in the right direction. “Why would there be - do you keep money there now? What year is it for you?”

“No, I don’t keep money behind my ear, it’s a - nevermind. And 2016, same as usual.” She digs in her pocket for a hair tie, pulls her hair back into a loose ponytail. Nearly at maximum comfort levels. She’d take her jeans off, but she notices - finally - that he’s giving her the Look, the one that suggests he’d like to take them off her himself.

“The 2030s on Earth are an interesting decade. We should go, sometime. Can be a bit dangerous but all in all it’s an excellent educational experience and they do lovely things with ice cream.” A more familiar grin gracing his mouth now, goofy and crooked.

“Sounds fantastic. I just need about five hours of hardcore relaxation before I can face the world again.”

He nods, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, yeah, take your time. I’ve got the movie theatre working again, I think, so we can - hold on. I was talking about something else. What was it?”

“Hands,” she says.

“Hands.”

“Right hand, left hand - ”

“Oh! Yes. The ritual.” His tone shifts, eyebrows down, quick-snap into his previous train of thought. The darkish, commanding thing he has sometimes, that makes her feel guilty (just a bit) for enjoying it. “You chose the left-hand path.”

“I don’t actually know what’s happening here,” she says.

“Today is the day. You make your offerings to the goddess within you. And your partner, if he or she or they are so lucky, assist you in your endeavors.”

She still doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but it’s oddly arousing. The way he’s saying it at least. That low methodical growling burr. “You mean Valentine’s Day? I think that’s just an advertising scam.”

“I mean the Day of - wait. No. Stupid Doctor, stupid stupid - it’s Valentine’s Day, isn't it.” He slumps, sighing heavily at himself.

(She stops it, his knee-jerk self-loathing when he gets something wrong, stops it before he goes too far but she does, kind of, enjoy watching him squirm.)

“Yep,” she says. “Valentine’s Day.”

“Not the Day of Little Deaths, then? No, obviously. Like I said, the 2030s are an interesting decade. And yes you did just say it was 2016 and I completely forgot to internalize that information, sorry. Valentine’s Day, of course. That’s the one with the balloons? Chocolate. Stuffed animals? Was I meant to get a card? Or a ring. Wait, no, not a ring, that’s - the other thing. A bracelet. Necklace, uh. A hat? Would you like a romantic hat?” Quick-snap into hyperactive overcompensation mode, like if he can just talk fast enough she won’t notice he’s made a mistake.

“I don’t need any of that,” she says softly. Eyes on his so he knows she means it. It’s nice, though. Not that she wants it but that he’d be willing to provide it, that he feels like he should. Even if it’s a touch belated.

“You sure?” Because he would, if she asked. Anything for her if she asked.

“Yeah. I’m good.” She smiles. And wonders if now would be an appropriate time to at least unbutton her trousers because for all they make her arse look amazing, they’re awfully constricting and today has been far too long to be interested in continuing that particular torture. “So.”

“So.”

She edges closer to him, around the console, tucks herself against him, her head nudging his shoulder until he gets the message and puts his arm around her. “Tell me more about this ritual.”

 

* * *

 

 

(“It’s sort of. You know. With the-” He makes a circle with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, and pantomimes fucking it with the index finger of his right.)

It involves five small granite cubes, a jar of ink, and a very flat, flimsy mobile phone. Disposable, he says, a disposable phone, they have those in 2035. He puts the mobile on the floor and the cubes arranged around it, dips his index finger in the ink and draws lines between them. And he then he finally takes her trousers off, clumsily undoing the button, the other button, why so many buttons? and rolls them down over her legs, flipping her slippers off to tug the fabric past her feet.

“There are no gods, not as such,” he says, hushed, fingers skating over the goose-flesh on her calves. “But your call will be heard.”

She still doesn’t know what’s happening. He kneels before her, head tilted up, and the sigil connects around them.

 

One, and she’s pulling his hair, thrusting against his mouth as his hands leave red marks on her thighs. She loses her breath and can’t catch it, pulling him up to kiss him, sloppy, she can taste herself on his tongue. 

“Keep going,” she moans. The sigil flickers around them. The smell of concrete after rain.

 _Petrichor_ , he clarifies. _Petra meaning stone; ichor, the blood of gods._

 

Two, and she’s asking, _what’s the end result? What’s this do?_ Choked-out, gasped-out, syllables stuttering as he slips two fingers inside her, thumb rough on her clit. 

“You are,” he says, and bites his lower lip as she clenches, shudders around his hand. “You do.”

She stumbles back, re-adjusts her ponytail, watches him lick his hand clean. 

 

Three, and she’s loose and well-fucked, she’s pushing him down to the floor with the heel of her foot. Makeup running by now, most likely, how much she’s sweating. Messy and the crests and valleys of the wave she’s riding and the sigil pulsing. 

“Left hand,” he says, squirming under all his layers. Under the pressure of her, the pain. Hands to his side, willingly. “Right hand I’d just.”

“Basic missionary?” She crouches over him, hands on his wrists, knee dug into his belly.

“Like I said. Not surprised.”

 

Four, and the refraction period of Gallifreyans is remarkably quick, going by how eager he is. Even bruised and come-stained, the scratches she’s left. Layers off, like a Russian nesting doll; she’s still in her panties and t-shirt, he’s rolling around in y-fronts and vest, on his knees again like where else would he be. The left-hand path: take what you will. And she does, his cock in her hand and dragging him up balls-first to meet her, rough and if it hurts then she might be sorry but he seems to like it and should she apologize? Really?

 

Five, and it’s better than chocolate and cards and stuffed animals and rings. Better by far than cut flowers, the sleepy domestic romance of breakfast in bed. The sigil vibrating, ink lines flashing. The thing, whatever it is, they’ve committed to. Electric, the gothic storm, something lurking in the shadows. The come dripping down her thighs and the malleable, mewling thing he is now. For her. For this.

The left hand, her left hand, closing around his throat. His head tilted back, lips parted, as she presses him down to the floor.

 

Six, and it hurts. Not just the fuck-me ache, a general ache, a soreness. _Enough,_ she thinks. _I’ve had enough._

He falls down limply, and the sigil dims.

“Never gotten that far before,” he says, a vacant look on his face.

“Let me guess. Another face, another time.”

He shrugs. Not much of him as he is now has anything to do with anyone other than her. They’ve had this conversation before. And if she didn’t get it, if she didn’t know by now: proof, here, how he curls up at her feet, his face flushed pink and open, so impossibly open, vulnerable, clinging on to whatever it is inside him that needs this. Leaning into her touch as she leans down to rub his shoulders.

“Are you okay?” She makes eye-contact and holds it until he nods. His head nested in the crook of her arm. The TARDIS beeping gently and producing washcloths, space-Lucozade. The ink from the sigil on his skin, smeared, as they share from the bottle of neon-orange whatever it is. Sticky and filthy and their hair matted to their foreheads.

“Yeah. You?”

She glances down at the broken sigil, the granite cubes pushed out of alignment. Fancy future mobile phone complaining about no GPS signal. Shifts uncomfortably, the cooling wet between her legs - they both need about ten showers apiece - the metal floor hard beneath her. Stiff joints and bruised flesh, she’s worn out and he’s worse.

“I’m okay,” she says, hand curling into the sweat-damp hair at his neck. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“Happy Day of Something Or Other,” he corrects, drifting into a sleep he’ll deny later.

(She eases him down to the floor, washcloths bundled up and under his head. She’ll wake him up soon enough. She just enjoys watching him when he stops squirming. A quiet moment. She carefully tucks a stray curl of hair behind his ear, then goes to clean herself up.)


End file.
